"Go back to London, to be sure, and publish the first number of that work of mine I told you of."
"And leave your friend, Lord Harry?"
"What good is my friend to me? He's nearly as poor as I am—he sent for me to advise him—I put him up to a way of filling both our pockets, and he wouldn't hear of it. What sort of a friend do you call that?"
Pay him and get rid of him. There was the course of proceeding suggested by the private counsellor in Mountjoy's bosom.
"Have you got the publisher's estimate of expenses?" he asked.
The doctor instantly produced the document.
To a rich man the sum required was, after all, trifling enough. Mountjoy sat down at the writing-table. As he took up a pen, Mr. Vimpany's protuberant eyes looked as if they would fly out of his head.
"If I lend you the money—" Hugh began.
"Yes? Yes?" cried the doctor.
"I do so on condition that nobody is to know of the loan but ourselves."